


find someone (to carry the sea)

by beepbedeep



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: 0/10 :((((, @thewildswriters you can have more than two gay people on one island I PROMISE!!, F/F, Touch-Starved, girls being nice to each other!!!!, it's gonna be ok!!, learning how to be touched after Bad Things, not canon not canon THIS SHIP IS NOT CANON
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28627437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: They go from sleeping scattered around the fire to holding hands like otters, a raft of girls, bodies tangled together like the seaweed that washes up after a big storm.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke
Comments: 19
Kudos: 237





	find someone (to carry the sea)

After, Leah can’t stand being touched. (By “after” she means after _him_ because even the island didn’t break her. No, he broke her and the island made her whole again.) It’s all too much, she already feels him every time she shuts her eyes, _burns_ , from hate or memory, something so all-encompassing she can’t even name the feeling. He’s the last person to touch her, and for a long time it feels like he’ll be the only one. And that, more than anything else he took from her, anything else he twisted, is unsettling. 

Leah isn’t the most affectionate person on the planet, but she still likes being hugged. After he finds out how old she really is (which he should have known, which he had to try to not see) and takes off, ripping her apart in the same breath, her skin freezes over along with everything else. She stops greeting her mom with a hug when she gets home, stops high-fiving her dad when he wins at cards, stops leaning into Ian’s shoulder when they laugh. (She also stops laughing, but she doesn’t miss the sound of her own joy nearly as much as she misses his.) 

More than anything else, this feels like a robbery – something that is only supposed to belong to _her_ taken in the middle of the night, stolen away without tripping the alarm. On her better days she tells herself _what did you expect, idiot? You gave that away_ , but some nights all she can do is scream into her pillow as her skin _aches_. All she can feel is him, overwhelmingly him, his hands all across her body, his breath in her ear, even as it grows more and more sinister. She learns to shut him out, learns how to crawl out from under his phantom grasp, to pull herself flat as his ghost gropes just above her back, but anyone else’s hands bring him back full force. She pulls away, plays it off until she can’t, until she can’t get too close to anyone else without her heart racing, and then of course, her plan goes down in the middle of the ocean. (She doesn’t just sit in the back row to be a bitch, she picks that seat because she _can’t feel_ anyone else, even as she pulls out his book, the only thing she can bring herself to read.) The plane plummets and for a split second she can’t feel him anywhere, knows they’re going down too fast for him to catch up, and for the first time in a long time, she _almost_ finds her way back into her own skin – right as everything goes dark. 

Then, of course, there’s the whole island thing. And it’s _brutal_ , horrific in almost every way, but there are some moments where Leah feels herself _smiling_ , and doesn’t think she’ll ever stop. And it’s not really that she feels better, but all her frantic obsession gets poured into what’s going on around them, and slowly, _slowly_ , she feels herself let go. He hasn’t caught up with her since the crash, not really, and when she burns the book she feels something release inside her stomach, burn like bleach, and it hurts a little, but mostly she feels _alive_ and _herself_. She looks around at her new friends, these weird, confusing, passionate, good people, and for a second, in the midst of all the awfulness, relaxes. 

And one day, without even really keeping track, Leah realizes _touch is nice again_. To be fair, there isn’t a great chance of being stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere with just a few other girls and avoiding physical contact. They do it to stay alive at first, and then they do it because they need the comfort, need the reminder that they are not alone.  
Even the more stoic girls in the group find their way into someone else’s warmth, Rachel falling asleep curled next to her sister, Dot throwing her arm around Shelby’s shoulders as they make a plan for the day, Toni and Martha leaning against each other as they watch the ocean for any other signs of human life. 

In this mess of conflict and comfort, even Leah finds herself surrounded, a touch here, a hug there, and she does not feel anyone other than her friends against her skin. There are no holds barred in their interactions, and nothing gets held back for long. Luckily, they tend to lean towards each other instead of away, so even their worst fights are worked through and sooner rather than later, two members of the group who were at each other’s throats are sharing food with a smile, offering a back massage, crowding close for warmth. It’s nice, as nice as anything here can be – it feels safe. Leah would never have imagined herself feeling better on a deserted island than in her bed at home, but some nights she’ll stare at the sky, (still overwhelmed by how many stars she can see) and when Fatin’s hand finds hers it makes her smile – the polar opposite of the heated, trapped feeling his fingers always invoked.

 _Fatin’s hands_. Somehow, Fatin is the one whose alive-heat is the first to make Leah feel safe, instead of claustrophobic. She isn’t sure why – they are from the same city, but that’s where their connection ends, nothing like Toni and Martha’s friendship or Rachel and Nora’s complicated sisterhood, but Fatin presents a special kind of mystery because she is _nothing_ like what Leah thought she was, and as she transforms from the girl-Leah-used-to-mock to the only person who knows what their elementary school class pet was named, Leah finds herself getting more and more pulled in. 

Or rather, by the time she notices, she’s already waist deep in Fatin, and unlike Rachel’s brush with quicksand, Leah has no desire to pull herself free. Fatin is there for all the most tense moments – it’s Fatin’s blood on Fatin’s hands wiped across Leah’s cheeks, but it’s also Fatin’s arms Leah falls into when she’s pulled out from the sea, and Fatin’s tentative hug wrapped around Leah’s shoulder after their fight. Fatin fights with teeth and nails, but she apologizes wholeheartedly, and Leah can trust that. (also, none of them are perfect, each girl has done something at least kind of bad, and they have to forgive each other or they wouldn’t be able to survive.) 

Fatin is there for the less consequential touches too, a hand brushing Leah’s hair off her face, a firm hand on her leg when she starts to get agitated, her breath on Leah’s neck and her arm around Leah’s waist on the colder nights. Leah is touched by all the girls, appreciates Dot’s firm hugs, Rachel’s emphatic fist-bumps, and Martha’s shoulder bumping hers in time to a song Shelby decides to sing, but it’s Fatin’s eyes that watch to make sure she doesn’t go too far down any spirals, Fatin’s gentle hands pulling her back to reality, Fatin’s firm grasp that will not take no for an answer. 

Her touch borders on possessive, (but not the way that word is usually meant, more like the way a room full of people watch a toddler to make sure they don’t hit their head on anything sharp, the way she and her childhood best friend used to tuck each other in when they played house, so maybe a better term is just caring.) Fatin’s _caring_ touch might be as simple as California-girls-have-to-stick-together (something Fatin likes to whisper as she catches Leah from tripping for the umpteenth time on their treks across the island) but it feels like _more_ , feels _different_ , feels more like the way Toni grins at Shelby across the fire, but everything about Fatin’s touch is so absolutely unlike his that Leah doesn’t know if she’d even be able to tell. 

It should be noted that Leah is also relearning how _to_ touch, just like the rest of them, how to reach out and comfort, to sooth when they are all disintegrating. They go from sleeping scattered around the fire to holding hands like otters, a raft of girls, bodies tangled together like the seaweed that washes up after a big storm. Fatin is one of the last holdouts for this new sleeping arrangement, and Leah is self-aware enough to know that it’s largely her fault, so one night she makes a point of crawling over to Fatin – set a little apart from the rest of them – before falling asleep, and when they all wake up, Leah’s forehead is pressed into Fatin’s back. 

After that, Fatin stops curling into her sweatshirt and shoves her face (tightly crushed against the bright morning light) into Leah’s neck instead. They all need each other here, and that provides as good a reason as any for Leah to rub her palms against the knots in Fatin’s neck, or interlock their fingers as the sun sets. Touching him wasn’t anything like this either – a fact that she unthinkingly mentions to Fatin one night. Fatin snorts derisively, says something about the difference between caring about something and using them, and all Leah can notice is the way the firelight reflects off her hair (still unfairly pretty, even with all the sand coating every part of their bodies.) (Fatin is brave, bold in a way Leah can’t imagine being, but she thinks she could be happy for such a long time following behind the other girl as she carves her way through the world, one loudly stated opinion at a time.)

Every so often, when Fatin’s fingers dance across Leah’s wrist she is overwhelmed with the preciousness of the touch, _those are world class fingers, they’ve touched antique cellos worth more than my life_. She tries to repay the gift with her own hands, clumsy as they are, but one evening, when nothing feels adequate in response, she turns and presses her lips to Fatin’s. Their mouth are gritty, and chapped, but Fatin’s is unbelievably warm and as she smiles against Leah, pulling them even closer together, Leah could swear that they are the only two people here, that everyone else is hundreds of miles away, and that Fatin’s hands pressed against the sunburnt skin of her back is all she’s ever needed.


End file.
